Friday, March 24, 2017

Earlier in the day Anderson and Wolf Blitzer anchored CNN Newsroom in the 2pm and 3pmET hours in the lead up to the announced AHCA vote that never happened.

Anderson has a story on 60 Minutes Sunday night.

From 60minutes.com:Anderson Cooper investigates first homegrown ISIS attack in U.S."60 Minutes" investigation into terrorist attack in Garland, Texas, shows how hard it is to stop such attacks -- even when a terrorist is identified

One of the two homegrown terrorists who attacked a Texas event in 2015 was known to the FBI. In fact, he had been arrested and convicted for lying to the Bureau. Elton Simpson received probation for his sentence and went on to die with his fellow jihadist, Nadir Soofi, as they attempted to kill scores of Americans at a contest to draw the prophet Muhammad in Garland, a city near Dallas. Anderson Cooper reports on the incident, the first on American soil to be claimed by ISIS, on the next edition of 60 Minutes, Sunday, March 26 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Cooper’s report comes in the same week that a London terror attack at the hands of a radicalized jihadist born in Britain was also claimed as the work of ISIS.

The FBI follows numerous leads and suspected terrorists and has thwarted a number of domestic attacks. But their jobs got even harder when ISIS’ militant propaganda began to spread as it fought and terrorized to create a caliphate in Iraq. Their victories and territorial gains in Iraq inspired Soofi and Simpson and many other jihadists says a former government terror tracker who has trained FBI agents to track. Seamus Hughes has also studied the communications of Soofi and Simpson.

“This idea of a so-called caliphate was a driver for Simpson and Soofi. They had finally realized what they had talked about for years,” says Hughes, now deputy director of the George Washington University Program on Extremism. “It touched a nerve with a lot of folks in the jihadi-sphere. Especially in the summer of 2015, you saw a lot of these FBI guys, everything was blinking red. You had a number of different plots happening. And the FBI was kind of trying their best to catch up,” he tells Cooper.

Asked by Cooper whether messages from ISIS had pushed Simpson into the attack, Hughes replies, “I think the [ISIS] folks whispering in his ear was a big part of it.”

When Soofi and Simpson, armed with multiple guns and bullet-proof vests, came to a security checkpoint at the event, they fired dozens of shots at a security guard and a police officer. The officer shot both of them, inflicting grave wounds. Cooper spoke with the security guard, Bruce Joiner. “How he avoided hitting me, I don’t know. Once [Officer Greg Stevens] saw them and saw the guns, he was all about takin’ out the threat.”

Unknown at the time was that an undercover FBI agent was in a car directly behind the attackers, according to court documents. The FBI refuses to comment on the presence of their agent, but told 60 Minutes, “There was no advance knowledge of a plot to attack the cartoon drawing contest in Garland, Texas.”

5 comments:

I predicted huge panels in Friday's 360 and yep, they were there. I was a minute late and a clip of Trump's statement from the Oval Office was on. The GOP healthcare bill, circling the drain for a couple days, finally sunk to the sewers. The bill was withdrawn, never voted on. In the clip Trump blamed others (Democrats but oddly not the GOPers who stated they would vote no) and predicted the collapse of ObamaCare "in the near future" and he'd have a great healthcare bill after that. Left unsaid was 'why not fix the ACA so it doesn't collapse?'. There was a series of clips of campaigner Trump promising immediate repeal and replace of ObamaCare. Anderson talked to Phil Mattingly about the how and the why of the withdrawal of the bill and then to Maggie Haberman to analyze Trump's statement.

The second segment started with a batch of campaigner Trump praising his own energy, negotiating skills and ability to make great deals. The rest of the segment was a panel of 8 of the usual pundits - none were the ones Aries Moon wanted to see. I switched to Hayes.

It seems like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is invited (and accepts those invitations) to MSNBC much more often than CNN. Nevertheless I was glad to see Anderson interview Sanders even though nothing in it was surprising. Topics covered included Trump blaming Democrats, why the GOP withdrew the bill, why it's a bad bill, giving Medicare the ability to negotiate prescription prices and why is the U.S. the only industrialized Western nation without universal health coverage? Anderson asked about Democrats agreeing to change ObamaCare and Sanders replied that it should be fixed but I didn't like this question. There was also another question Sanders dismissed as Anderson playing into the 'media game' (can't recall what question that was).

I checked Hayes during 360's commercial break and got back just as the clip of Sean Spicer ended. Then it was the panel of 8 again. Nope.

"Ex-Trump Advisers Offer To Testify On Russia" was the chyron for Jessica Schneider's report about Manafort and Stone offering to go to the House Intel Committee and spill their guts (although i think they'd lie through their teeth). Also in the report was criticism Rep. Nunes has been getting for how he's handling the committee's investigation into Trump and Russia.

Anderson previewed the start of the second hour: Trump commenting on the GOP healthcare demise.

It didn't take long for CNN anchors and pundits to try to make Democrats the problem for the failure of the GOP's disastrous Obamacare replacement. Gloria Borger and David Gergen both said Trump/Ryan/GOP's debacle is an 'opportunity' for Democrats to step in and offer solutions to fix the 'problems' with ACA since it's headed for 'collapse'. Um, NO. Obamacare is NOT collapsing--and the CBO keeps confirming this, so that talking point needs to die AND why should Democrats save genius boy Paul Ryan and idiot boy Trump from the mess THEY caused unnecessarily? The GOP OWN this mess and they will have to live with screwing up their first big test of governing. Trump proves once again that he sucks at making deals and can add this to his list of failures--the orange clown tried to blame Democrats when his own party couldn't get their acts together to come to some kind of an agreement--they embarrassed themselves trying to destroy the lives of millions who desperately need Obamacare to continue. Paul Ryan is no Nancy Pelosi (she gets things DONE).

@Jaanza, I totally agree with you about AC suggesting to Sanders that Democrats do something to help the GOP on healthcare. It seems the press doesn't like to hold the GOP fully accountable for the mistakes they make--they HAVE to find some way to pull the Democrats into the GOP's swamp of stupid.

@JAANZA HAYES WAS A GUEST ON BILL MAHER....IT WAS DIFFICULT FOR HIM TO GET A WORD IN EDGE WISE. SOMETIMES BILL WANTS TO DOMINATE HIS OWN SHOW. SO WHY INVITE GUESTS?ALSO ANDERSON DOES HAVE A WAY OF PHRASING QUESTIONS IN A DEFENSIVE MANNER IF HE'S INTERVIEWING A DEMOCRAT. THIS IS BOTHERSOME. THE REPUBLICANS ARE A DISGRACE AND THEIR NEW AND IMPROVED BILL WAS PULLED BECAUSE OF THE ANGER OF THE REPUBLICAN CONSTITUENCY. SOME OF THEM REALIZED, A BIT LATE, THAT THE NEW BILL PROMISED THEM LESS THAN THE OLD HEALTH CARE BILL. TRUMPCARE'S MAIN PURPOSE WAS TO DRIVE DOWN THE COST OF HEALTHCARE FOR THOSE WHO WERE LUCKY ENOUGH TO BE EARNING MORE THAN $200,000 A YEAR.DID PAUL RYAN EVER DIVULGE THIS FACT? NEVER. IT WAS PURE B.S...AND THEY WILL NEVER REPLACE OBAMACARE BECAUSE, EVEN WITH ITS FLAWS, IT STILL PROVIDES HEALTH CARE FOR MANY WHO WOULD NOT ORDINARILY HAVE IT.

@Cappy, I had the same thought as you about how Bill Maher sometimes doesn't allow his guests ample enough time to get their points across--that can be quite annoying--kind of like how Chris Matthews interrupts his guests non-stop. Maybe Real Time might be better if the often-lame comedy routines were dropped and the guests were limited to the 2 or 3 folks on the panel--maybe the panelists would have more time to speak--the additional guests at the beginning and mid-point of the show seem unnecessary to me--I just like hearing the panel discussion on its own.

IF TRUMP MAN WANTS TO PASS ANY LEGISLATION, HE BETTER GET USED TO THE IDEA OF "DOING HIS HOMEWORK." YOU CAN'T SELL ANYTHING, INCLUDING LEGISLATION, IF YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT IT, AND DON'T CARE. THAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING ABLE TO SELL "YOURSELF" AND SELLING SOMETHING THAT BENEFITS OTHERS, SOMETHING PRESIDENT DUFFUS KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT.MY GUESS, AND IT'S A GOOD ONE, IF YOU DON'T BOTHER "READING ABOUT THE ISSUES AT STAKE," AND THE PROS AND CONS OF THE LEGISLATION PUT FORTH, YOU WILL HAVE ZERO EFFECTIVENESS. BUT THAN AGAIN, PRESIDENT DUFFUS SO FAR HAS HAD ZERO EFFECTIVENESS AND THE POLLS SHOW IT.60% OF THE THOSE POLLED BY CNN, FIND HIM UNTRUSTWORTHY REALLY?....WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE OTHER 35%? ARE THEY IN A COMA? I'M NOT SAYING THEY ARE ALL OBNOXIOUS LOSERS, BUT HOW CRAZY DOES TRUMP MAN HAVE TO BE, BEFORE THEY FEEL HE'S LYING?? AND THE OTHER 5%, I GUESS DON'T CARE, WELL NOT YET.STAY TUNED.